CORRUPTION AND PATRONAGE POLITICS:

THE CASE OF HARAMBEE IN KENYA

Presented by Anne Waiguru

At the Measuring Corruption Workshop by KEY CENTRE FOR ETHICS, LAW, JUSTICE AND GOVERNANCE and TRANSPARENCY
INTERNATIONAL,
Brisbane, Australia
Oct 2002

Introduction
Harambee (pulling together) is a self help movement indigenous to Kenya. It entails voluntary contributions in cash and kind
(e.g. labor) to community amenities such as schools, water projects and health clinics. Almost everybody dealing with the Kenyan
development prospects, problems, doing research or trying to explain about Kenya to outsiders will find it necessary to know
about harambee as a development strategy. In Kenya, harambee is a way of filling needs as well as of working and living in
Kenya.
Harambee has been an integral element of Kenyan nationalism . Before independence Harambee was a grass-root form of social
exchange of labour and other forms of mutual assistance. The concept became a national slogan, a motto on the nation crest
and a rally cry on Madaraka Day in June 1963 when the President of Kenya, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta formally made it such. After
this day, Harambee is used to denote collective effort, community self-reliance, cooperative enterprises and all forms of collective
self-reliance.
Ideally a harambee begun with a community identifying a need, and then organizing groups to meet it. These groups could have
one target or a continuing program of related targets. The original harambee initiatives in the early 70s built schools, health
dispensaries, cattle dips, and roads, later emphasizing agricultural and water projects, during this time, the Harambee groups were
not formally registered as societies and the levels of harambee activities varied considerably among the provinces being found to
be higher where suitable land resources favored settlement and development efforts.
The main advantage of a harambee project was the fact that it reflected a bottom up as opposed to the usual top down project
initiation process therefore fostering ownership and accountability. It ensured that communities met their prioritized objective
while at the same time ensuring that it kept the free rider problem at the minimum as everyone was encouraged to voluntarily
contribute in whatever way they were able both in cash and kind. This noble ideal however has been corrupted by the gradual
erosion of its original self help concept and has been replaced by a culture of political philanthropy used by politicians a vehicle
for bribing voters.
Harambee initiatives can be categorized into two broad groups private and public. Private harambees typically raise funds for
weddings, funerals, college fees, and medical bills and so on from family and friends. Public harambees raise funds for
development projects such as schools, health centers water projects and so on. This study focused on public harambees.
The name harambee is a colloquialism of Indian origin that translates to pooling effort. In traditional communities, people pooled
effort in activities that required intensive labour effort such as hut building, clearing virgin land and bringing in the harvest.
Why study Harambee
Harambee has been said to predispose people and particularly politicians to corruption in two ways.
First, it provides an avenue for people who steal public funds to legitimize themselves to the public. A survey of the Kenyan
Public Expenditure management done by the Center for Governance and Democracy for the period between 1991 and 1997,
indicated that the government lost more than Ksh 451 billion (equal to ksh1170 billion/US$15billion inflation adjusted) through

mismanagement. Of this, wasteful expenditure was the main way by which the government lost public funds. This waste included
the embezzlement of money given to harambees1.
Second, there is no accountability for contributions, and few, if any, benefactors make the effort to see that their
contributions were used for the intended purpose. As a result, there is no mechanism for exposing and sanctioning custodians
who embezzle the funds and fraudsters who raise money for fictitious harambees.
Literature review
Different interpretations of the nature and scope of the Harambee movement have been forwarded by the relatively few scholars
who have conducted research on this topic. Some authors have stressed the role of Harambee in fostering social cohesion and
solidarity. Others recognize the links between Harambee and the traditional forms of communal works; they stress the important
use of traditional groups for mobilizing and organizing the rural population. Others suggest that the rural poors effort in
community self-help activities impoverish them for the benefit of the rural rich, and cite cases of misuse of Harambee funds.
While others still who are supporters of Harambee grant that although such cases do exist, claim that self-help activity is an
appropriate way to generate local resources for building facilities and providing services which have a far broader use and
applicability than benefiting the rural elite. 2
The reasons as to why the harambee movement has flourished in Kenya have also been presented. Mutiso (1975) saw that a
center-periphery (paralleling an urban-rural) division within Kenya as broadly reflecting different cultures and that self-help or
harambee acted as a defensive strategy of the periphery used to squeeze what it could out of a seemingly opulent and arrogant
center.3
Holmquist F. forwards several reasons as to why the self help movement in Kenya flourished. One reason was that besides
Kenyattas call, the rural petty bourgeois responded positively to Harambees because they found themselves, in competition with
each other for the scarce political roles which could be used to enhance ones economic standing as well as general social and
political prestige. Also with the peasantry demanding social amenities and having some leverage over their leaders, the latter
had to help the community extract from government and private sources in order to prove their worth to the population.
Holmquist also suggested that the rural petty bourgeois needed self help activities since the bureaucracy reserved most of the
functions of programmatic policy making for itself and this alternative did not threaten their status as a class, although
competition among them affected the political fortunes of individuals. He saw the rural petty bourgeois as having a far more
immediate and long term interest in local amenity development than their centrally recruited and transferable class counterparts
in the bureaucracy.4
Njuguna Ngethe on the other hand pointed out a peculiar irony in the fact that the independent and free-wheeling character of
the rural petty bourgeoisie in Kenya prompted President Kenyatta to encourage and almost mandate their role in self help. He
sees the presidents disillusionment after independence with parliamentary backbenchers sniping at government policy, and
increasingly being frustrated over his inability to enforce party discipline and political order resulted in Kenyatta haphazardly
1

Center for Governance and Democracy(CGD) 2001, A Survey of Seven Years of Waste - Policy Brief

Thomas, 1977; 46

Mutiso G.C.M.1975, Kenya: Politics, Policy and Society

Holmquist F., Politics and Public Policy in Kenya and Tz - edited by J. D. Barkan

elaborating a notion of legitimate constituency service in terms of assisting the expanding number of self-help groups. This form
of politics was very conveniently non ideological and non programmatic. Kenyatta called it a useful politics rather than a
useless politics of all talk and no action. Self-help would unite politician and constituent in hard work as opposed to idle
chatter. This important component of practical state ideology was cemented by the implied partnership between state and
society in the basic rule of the self-help game: government helps those who help themselves.5
Mutiso and Godfrey [1973] and Mbithi and Rasmusson (1975) cite two reasons for the proliferation of the self help movement.
The suppression of regionalism between 1962 and 1965 by the ruling party, Kenya African National Union [KANU], by absorbing
leaders of Kenya African Democratic Union {KADU] and Akamba Peoples Party [APP]. acted to create conflict between KANU
groups who had been associated with the party at its beginning and at independence [KANU A] and those who had just come in.
This led to several national leaders moving into competition at the district level using the already mushrooming harambee.
The other reason forwarded for the growth of the harambee was that before independence, nationalist ideology was couched in
such slogans that it appeared to promise easy things and increased material well-being soon after the colonialist and imperialist
exploiters had left. This led to a rising expectation of what independence would deliver. The 1962-1965 period was therefore
one of gradual disillusionment with the realities of post-independence self-assessment and apparent breach of promise by the
leaders. Consequently, the year 1965 witnessed the publication of Sessional Paper No. 10 on African Socialism calling on selfreliance and hard work. This document also coincided with the publication of the first post-independence Five Year Development
Plan again emphasizing the harsh realities of development that is reduced dependency on government and the need for hard
work and self reliance.
Mutiso later interprets Harambee as based on the dynamics of Kenyas changing social structure. He argues that the polarization
of western defined social values, social mobility patterns and socio-metric interaction patterns in the form of an emerging elite on
the one hand should be seen against equally well-defined indigenous and neo-indigenous value-interaction patterns representing
the majority of the population. He sees this polarization as creating a social cleavage which makes the indigenous system the
periphery and the elite the center. To Mutiso, the fact that the backbone of the Harambee movement is the periphery, is a reaffirmation of the peripherys alienation from the economic and political center and their desire to co-opt leadership from the
center or open mobility patterns from the periphery to the center. This, he argues, is seen as essential if the periphery is in the
long run going to be able to re-channel the allocation of resources and access the opportunity into the periphery.
In supporting this orientation, Frank Holmquist sees Harambee as a preemptive strategy. In his studies of project choice patterns
in Kisii Kenya, he inferred that such choices were dictated by an ever-present confrontation between government change agents
and local interest groups. This strategy which also exploits uniqueness of local criteria and uniqueness of locally designed projects
so as to arrest government interest, assumes that government will continue with their traditional planning approach but is able
and willing to take over locally initiated projects. Thus the pre-emptive strategy is not a strategy to sabotage government
development efforts but a deliberate attempts to attract attention and alleviate irrelevant planning and centralized decision
making. In other words according to Godfrey and Mutiso, groups try to pre-empt the field of contestants by convincing the
government that it is politically and economically unwise to deny support to a superior local effort.
J. D Barkan and F. Holmquist in their attempt to address the social base of self-help, hypothesized that different strata and
possibly different social classes would exhibit different levels of support for the self-help movement. Their primary concern in
testing this hypothesis was to answer the question whether the Kenyan self help motto is a vehicle of small farmers or whether
5

Holmquist F. Politics and Public Policy in Kenya and Tz - edited by J. D. Barkan

it is a vehicle through which large land owners, in alliance with the state co opt and tax the rural masses. They concluded
that almost everybody in the rural areas supported self-help the only difference being the degree with which they were involved
and that self help consisted mainly of many small projects led by fairly typical members of the rural community and that the
belief in the value of self-help was broad based and was strongest among the rural poor who believed that they can only
develop through it.6
Although the Harambee movement was initially encouraged by and given official blessing of the Kenyan government in order to
shift the cost of providing social services to the peasantry, the net result however has been a greater transfer of resources from
the center than would have occurred had the movement never grown to its present size.
By the late seventies, the government had become alarmed at the proliferation of the self-help movement and sought to slow the
rate down citing that development was now getting out of control. The problem became one of trying to demobilize the
peasants as they seemed to be doing too much. The bureaucracy felt it was loosing control and thus needed to gradually
erode peasant initiative and reassert its control over local development. Hence the government elaborated a procedure by which
projects had to be registered by the Ministry of Social Services in order to be eligible for aid.
Despite this effort and the fact that harambee has played an increasingly important role in the social life of millions of Kenyans
and having always been a highly politicized activity, the harambee movement developed in a haphazard manner. Harambee was
left out of the main stream of the governments development plan and its growth has been achieved with little or no
coordination or regulation by the government.
Mbithi & Rasmusson estimated the magnitude of Harambee as having contributed over 30% of rural development investment. It
was estimated that during the 1976/77 financial year alone a total of Kenya pounds 8.8 million was collected during harambees
and the197983 development plan, declared Harambee to have been a major strategy for accelerating rural development since
independence7.
In his study Gachuki recommended some form of regulation of Harambee affairs for three reasons - efficiency , the protection of
the interest of intended beneficiaries and the fact that that those who managed harambee projects ought to observe certain
management and leadership ethics and needed to be accountable and to generally put the interests of the project before personal
or sectional ones. In his paper he considers the need for greater administrative and legal regulations of Harambee activities in
Kenya, and the mechanisms by which this might be achieved.
It is important to note that of the few scholars who have studied the subject, none has attempted to measure the actual
magnitude of the harambee movement in Kenya and most of the studies focussed on the period before 1980. Therefore, the
need for an in-depth analysis of the magnitude and trend of the current movement became apparent and this study then sought
to fill this dearth of knowledge.
Study Objectives
The primary objective of the pilot study was to compile definitive data on harambee activity and to study the evolution of
harambee over time
6

J.D. Barkan & F.Holmquist World Politics, Peasant State Relation & the Social Base of self-help in Kenya Pge 369-374.

Mbithi and Rasmusson Self Reliance in Kenya

 A secondary objective of the study was to conduct a preliminary follow up of harambee projects.
Methodology
Data was compiled from newspaper archives of the two main national dailies (The Nation and The Standard) for the period 19801999. This data was collected on the following key variables;

Name and type of project (e.g. school, health center, water etc)
District and constituency
Host personalities (e.g. local MP, councilor, school chairman etc)
Reported individual contributions and
Total amount raised

Since a preliminary survey established that over 90% of harambee activity is concentrated in the months of March-September,
data was collected only for these months only due to limitation of time and resources. The analysis was then done based on a
sample of 1,987 harambees.
The project follow ups were done in three districts (Nakuru, Maragwa and Kajiado).
Scope and limitations of the study
Data on harambee gathered from press reports has certain inherent biases. A harambee has a higher likelihood of press
coverage the more prominent the personalities involved, hence, the data will have a VIP bias.
Another limitation of the data is double counting of funds collected in mini harambees that are subsequently donated in
major harambees. Newspaper reports do not always provide sufficient information to allow for the necessary corrections in the
data.
Other inaccuracies include dishonored pledges and bouncing cheques, and cases of prominent individuals who circulate the same
money in several harambees are not unknown.
However, in so far as the reporting is reasonably consistent over time, the data provides a reasonably accurate reflection of
broad trends and patterns.

Summary of main findings

Principal Finding
The principal finding of this study was that public harambees in the multi-party era have become a KANU dominated election
campaign phenomena. KANU is and has been the ruling party since independence.

Other findings were as follows;

Number of Reported Harambees
As shown in the figure below, the number of harambees reported doubled from 97 in 1991, to 203 in 1992, the year of the
first multi-party elections. Only 74 harambees are reported in the following year 1993.
NO. OF REPORTED HARAMBEES
250

200

150
NO.
100

50

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

1989

1988

1987

1986

1985

1984

1983

1982

1981

1980

YEAR

Harambee activity picked up again in the run up to the 1997 general elections, from 87 in 1995 to 162 and 205 in 1996 and
1997 respectively.
Harambee Amounts
In 1992, the total amount raised increased almost six-fold, from Ksh. 26 million (Ksh 85million/US$1.1 million inflation adjusted
to 1999 prices) in 1991, to Ksh.142 million (about Ksh 362million/US$4.6 million inflation adjusted to 1999 prices). The following

year, that is 1993, the amount raised declined to Ksh. 60 million (Ksh105million/US$1.3 million inflation adjusted to 1999
prices).
T o ta l F u n d s R a is e d in R e p o r te d H a r a m b e e s
1 .4

1 .2

0 .8
K s h . B illio n
0 .6

0 .4

0 .2

0
1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
Year

In 1997, the amount raised increased from Ksh. 227 million (Ksh 280 million/US$3.6million inflation adjusted to 1999 prices) in
1996, to a record Ksh.1.35 billion (Ksh1.4 billion/US$18 million inflation adjusted to 1999 prices). The amount raised in 1997
constitutes half the decades reported contributions.
Harambee Participation
Harambee participation has clearly changed over the years as well. Politicians are the principal donors in public harambees and
moreover patronage has become more concentrated.
The president comes out as the principal harambee patron, and his patronage seems to have grown over time. In the 1980s, he
is reported as having contributed Ksh. 24.5 million in 187 harambees, in person and through emissaries, which accounted for just
under one percent of total contributions, and 30% of contributions by the principal 100 donors. In the 1990s, he is reported as
having contributed over Ksh.130 million to 448 harambees, constituting just under 5% of the decades total contributions, and
30% of the contributions by principal donors.

Concentration of participation

President
Top 10 donors
Top 20 donors
Top 50 donors
Top 100 donors
Total

% of total contributions
1980-89
1990-99
0.3%
4.7%
1.1%
7.6%
1.4%
8.8%
2.3%
11.5%
4.5%
14.7%
100%
100%

% of top 100 contributors

1980-89
1990-99
6.3%
32.2%
24.6%
51.7%
30.9%
60.1%
51.7%
78.4%
100%
100%

It was pretty obvious that harambee participation has become more concentrated, that is, fewer and fewer individuals account for
a larger and larger share of money raised. In the 1990s, the 100 principal donors accounted for 16% of the reported
contributions, up from just under 5% in the previous decade. In the single party era (1980-91), politicians accounted for 70%
of the money contributed by the principal donors. Between 1992 and 1997, KANU politicians accounted for 68% of the money
contributed by the principal donors, and opposition politicians 4%.
Election Driven
Harambee has become an election driven activity. In the 1980s, the election years (1983 and 1988) accounted for only 7% of
the decades total fund raising. In the multiparty 90s, the two election years (1992 and 1997) account for 60% of the decades
total. The year 1992 accounts for 26% of the funds raised in the first half of the decade (1990-94), and 1997 for 60% of the
funds raised in the second half (1995-99).
It was notable that in the first half of the nineties, 19 of the 100 principal donors in the survey gave more than 25% of their
total contributions in 1992, on average, three and half times more than non-election years while in the second half, this number
doubled to 38, and the contributions were on average, 5 times more than non-election years.
Project follow ups
The project follow-ups revealed a critical lack of transparency and accountability. Many of the beneficiaries could not be traced as
many of the self help group were formed ad hoc during elections and disbanded after sharing the money.
The District Social Development Offices (DSDOs), register Self-help groups and are supposed to authorize their expenditures. In the
three districts visited, the DSDOs did not have any records on the finances of self-help groups. All the beneficiaries visited did
not have readily available project accounts. Whereas this would not be a big problem in a small village setting where the
amounts in question are not so large and everybody knows the organizers personally, in a large national harambee with

thousands of anonymous citizens as contributors a need for legal control would arise as informal social mechanisms are no longer
workable.
The other important finding was that although harambee money consisted of donations from the public, the beneficiaries did not
expect members of the public to ask for accounts, in other words, they did not expect to be accountable to anyone.
The Evolution of the Harambee
The evolution of the harambee movement has raised various ethical questions both in comparing it to other similar movements
around the globe like the Political Action committees in the US and in its general analysis.
Though similar with regard to the PAC movement is some aspects, the harambee movement comes out more strongly as uniquely
different. Like in the case of a Political Action Committee, the harambee movement is an important aspect of Kenyan politics
and the Kenyan electoral system. However, it differs in that while the PACs exist legally as a means for such organizations as
corporations and trade unions to make donations to candidates for federal office, something that they cannot do directly,
harambees main objective is to meet an immediate common need not of politicians but of the public using locally available
resources. In this aspect therefore the movement comes out as uniquely different.
Notably, whereas in the PAC the money trickles up from the public to the politicians voluntarily, in Harambees the money trickles
down from state coffers through politicians to the general public. In harambees the public is usually oblivious of the fact that
they are being used to further a politicians career and the use of the harambee movement as a campaign vehicle during election
time is as an evolving phenomena revealed only by this study.
Another ethical question arose this year with regard to the harambee movement when members of parliament used harambees to
justify their more than 150% increase in income (to approximately US$ 6,400 per month), despite Kenyas current tough
economic situation, to the fact that their constituents expected them to contribute to harambees. Should harambees be used
legitimize the unsubstantiated income raises by the same politicians who use the movement as a vehicle for bribing voters?
Some generalized characteristics that made the Harambee self-help development effort distinct from other development activities in
Kenya and the region have been eroded. This included the reflection of a bottom-up rather than a top-down development
project initiation, the participation of individuals in this self help movement which was guided by the principle of the collective
good rather than individual gain and the choice of projects was guided by the principle of satisfying the immediate need of
participating members and groups. This local level ideology, which can be summarized as enlightened community and collective
self-interest was a very typical criterion for project choice. In most cases, it was what the group felt was needful which
determined who the group associated with, which resource mobilization strategy would be effective and what incentives, catch
phrases would be appropriate to increase commitment.
However, as revealed by the study, over the years, harambee has evolved from its original self-help concept into a perverse
culture of political philanthropy. The bottom up has been replaced by a top down initiative. Indeed, an elected leader's
effectiveness is in many places measured almost exclusively by the number of harambees conducted for constituents and the
amount of money contributed. In many ways, development projects have become incidental to harambee; political contests are
the real purpose, participation is predominantly by politicians where the political prominence of the guests at a harambee and
the list of those who send them with contributions has become the barometer of the host's political influence. Harambee has

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therefore become a tool for political patronage used by politicians to garner votes and maintain the loyalty of their electorate
and thus an important arena within which political leadership at the local level is determined and sustained.
Moreover, harambee has played a significant role in accentuating inequalities between classes within regions as well as between
regions with the richest districts usually being the most influential politically. This means that regions that are not politically
correct are in the long run far behind in development. It has also been suggested that the comparatively wealthy usually have a
stronger interest in self help projects than their less wealthy counterparts because they were better able to afford the user fees
once the projects were operating.
Most important is the concern for misappropriation of funds. It is important to note that this concern did not begin recently. In
a speech made at a fund-raising meeting in the mid seventies, Daniel Arap Moi, who was then Vice President, called for a
nationwide accounting system for Harambee money in order to instill the confidence in the wananchi that their money was
properly used. He also appealed to the DCs to form committee of honest people to ensure that harambee funds were
spent on the projects for which they were intended.8 - confirmation of dishonest project leaders, straight from the horses
mouth.
The succession of President Moi and the escalating world economic difficulties have translated into legitimacy and fiscal crises in
Kenya. As politicians seek political position they tend to devote more attention to harambees by bestowing considerable amounts
of money to various projects especially in their constituencies. The sources of these funds are rumored to come from several
possible unacknowledged sources including businessmen for services rendered and from the public treasury.
When the
president and members of provincial administration hold harambees, money is often collected from ordinary citizens by chiefs
and assistant chiefs to be presented at meeting. Such collections are not voluntary but a tax.
The Measure of Corruption
Apart form the ethical questions posed by the Harambee movement, the activity and the amounts contributed could be used as
measure of corruption in Kenya for several reasons: The finding that principal donors are evidently politicians and the fact that the source of the funds donated in harambees is
unknown and way beyond the means of many of the political donors.
The finding that harambee activity and amounts donated increases significantly during election periods, and thus the evidence
that harambee is used by politicians as a vehicle for bribing voters.
The fact that the government looses significant amounts of money through wastage which includes money donated in
harambee and this particularly in election years as reported in the quoted CGD report.
Harambee activity and the amounts contributed could therefore be used as a measure of the increase or decrease of this form of
corruption in Kenya relative to previous periods.

Ngethe, 1979, op cit.

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Conclusion
The fact that harambee has always been political and despite the nature of harambee politics having undergone a gradual
transformation from a bottom-up to a top-down process, one of the defining features of this transformation being the
gradual erosion of ownership and accountability, Harambee is still an important Kenyan institution and an integral part of the
nations history, development efforts, and associational life.
However, since following the adoption of multiparty politics harambee had become a vehicle for bribing voters, if the current
trend continues, bribery will become the primary function of public harambees and the community objectives would disappear
altogether. Bribing voters is not only a subversion of democracy, but it provides powerful motive for corruption, and undermines
public ethics.
Also while many promote the strengthening of civil society as a safeguard against corruption or tyranny by the state, in the case
of harambee, an institution that emerged from the civil society, has been co-opted by the same politicians who also control the
state and has been used as an instrument for blunting accountability.
Recommendations
The following proposals were made for consideration;

Suspension of harambees during elections.

Barring contenders for elective office from contributing to harambees during the elections
Defining election spending ceilings to include candidates harambee contributions for a specified period (6, 9, or 12 months)
before elections.

Another proposal that could be considered is to regulate harambee projects through the tax system. This could be done by
introducing a withholding tax on harambee contributions that exceed a certain threshold promoting accountability in at least
three ways. First, harambee projects would be compelled to maintain financial records and reduce the scope for embezzlement of
harambee funds. Secondly, it would contribute to developing a culture of financial probity and accountability among the citizens.
Third, it would deter the channeling of illegitimate earnings into political patronage and by so doing, revive the self-help principle
and spirit of harambee.

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Bibliography
Mutiso G.C.M (1975) Kenya: Politics, Policy and Society
Holmquist F. Politics and Public Policy in Kenya and Tz - edited by J. D. Barkan
Mbithi and Rasmusson Self Reliance in Kenya
Godfrey EM & Mutiso GCM The political Economy of Self help
Barkan J.D. & Holmquist F. World Politics, Peasant State Relation & the Social Base of Self Help in Kenya
Gachuki D Harambee In Kenya
Ngethe, 1979, op cit.
Thomas, 1977; 46

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